Customizing Your Store Signup Form & Approval Workflow

If you let customers request their own Custom Store, the public signup form and the approval process behind it are both fully configurable.

What the signup form controls

Your store-signup form is what a prospective store owner (a coach, teacher, band director, company admin, etc.) fills out to request a store. You control:

• Which fields appear — beyond the basics, you can add custom fields specific to your business (e.g., "organization type," "expected order size," "fundraiser or merch store?").
• Captcha — whether a captcha is required to submit.
• Where the form shows up — it can be auto-injected into an admin-picked page, added via shortcode anywhere you like, or placed as a classic widget.
• Role assigned on signup — whether a new signup becomes a store owner directly, or something else depending on your workflow.

Setting it up

1. Go to Manage Stores → Signup settings in your WordPress admin.
2. Configure the fields you want collected. Custom fields you add are automatically saved to the customer's profile once submitted.
3. Choose your captcha setting.
4. Choose delivery: pick a page for auto-injection, grab the shortcode, or add the classic widget wherever you want the form to appear.
5. Save.

Approval workflow

New store requests can be configured to require your approval before the store goes live, rather than activating instantly. If approval is required:

1. New requests appear in your admin's store-approvals queue.
2. Review the submission (organization details, any custom fields you collect).
3. Approve or decline. Approved requests activate the store and notify the requester; declined ones don't.

Whether approval is required at all, and who can approve, is part of your signup settings — some shops prefer instant self-service stores, others want every store reviewed first (e.g., to confirm it's a legitimate organization before extending pay-by-terms or a profit-share arrangement).

Editing the form after it's live

You can update fields, captcha, or placement at any time from the same Signup settings screen — existing stores aren't affected by changes to the signup form itself, only new submissions.

Troubleshooting

• Form not appearing where expected — recheck the delivery method (auto-injected page vs. shortcode vs. widget); only one delivery method is typically active at a time.
• Custom field data not showing on the user's profile — confirm the field was saved correctly in Signup settings; custom fields save under a predictable naming pattern tied to the field key.
• Approvals queue empty but you know requests came in — confirm approval is actually required in your signup settings; if it's off, stores activate immediately and skip the queue entirely.

Related: Multistores vs. Advanced Stores: Two Ways to Offer Team Stores, The Store Owner / Supervisor Panel, Explained.